Compulsion (12 page)

For a shocked moment they stared at each other. Then the woman laughed and set the tray on the table. “You have to be Barrie,” she said. “Have mercy, aren’t you a sight?”

Her voice had a faster tempo than Pru’s and Eight’s, and her words were more musical, the high notes climbing toward the end of the sentence before dropping again like the cab-driver’s. She was sixtyish, with graying hair slicked back into a bun, and fine features highlighted by smooth, sooty skin. Her posture made the dark slacks and white blouse look elegant.

“Come here, child. Don’t stand there gaping. Miss Pru warned me ’bout you lookin’ like your mama, but I swear, you’re the spittin’ image.”

Barrie smiled awkwardly and said hello, only to find herself pulled into a hug. There was no awkwardness to that. Maybe because there was no one to see, or maybe Barrie was getting used to being hugged, or maybe it was the woman herself. Mary, presumably. Who else?

“I know you’re probably thinking all this is strange,” Mary said, releasing her. “The house and Miss Pru and all. You’re gonna like it here just fine. Miss Pru will love you, and you’re gonna love Miss Pru. It’ll be good for you both to have each other. She’s missed your mama awfully bad.” She stepped
back and smoothed her blouse with a wink. “Now, I’d better get back to the customers, or we’ll be in a real fix. Folks get downright mean when they’re hungry.”

Barrie hadn’t had time to explore the tearoom yet. She was spending more time away from Watson’s Landing than she was in it.

“You go ’head and eat some of them sandwiches, if you want.” Mary nodded toward a half-f platter on the table. She picked up a tray of delicately frosted tea cakes, which were more miniature works of art than food, and bustled back through the butler’s pantry into the tearoom.

Once she had gone, Barrie paused to regain her wits before searching the kitchen. Her phone had to be there. She’d looked everywhere else. Moving systematically, she opened and closed drawers, checked cabinets, and looked under the table. She felt nothing but a few inconsequential tugs here and there. The only phone she found was an old-fashioned rotary one hanging on the wall, which she used to dial her own number, and then listened for a nonexistent ring. She was considering her next move when Mary came back carrying another tray of dirty plates and cups.

“You look like you’re fixin’ to try to think your way through the floor, child.”

“You haven’t seen my phone by any chance? It has a white case with a pair of eyes painted on the back. I need
to call my godfather—” Did Mary know about Mark?

It was always hard to explain who Mark was in terms of his relationship to Barrie and Lula. He
was
the closest thing to a friend Lula’d had in seventeen years, and he was also Barrie’s godfather. But as Lula had liked to remind him on a daily basis, she paid him to live in and take care of Barrie. Barrie wasn’t sure if Pru knew that. She hoped not, and somehow the idea of Mary knowing it was even worse.

Mary set the dishes beside the sink. “I haven’t seen it,” she said. “There’s one on the wall you can use, or in the library. That’s down the hall and to the right, ’bout halfway to the stairs.”

Barrie poked her head into an enormous dining room and a parlor before she found a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a heavy mahogany desk, a pair of wingback chairs, and an elaborately carved wood-framed sofa. A thin-lipped man peered at her unpleasantly from a life-size portrait above the fireplace. His iron-gray hair matched the grim color of his business suit.

Seven Beaufort positively radiated joy by comparison.

Equally unpleasant was the violent pull of a lost object inside the room. It drew Barrie inside, but at the same time something about the room and the man in the portrait made her want to keep her feet firmly planted in the hall. Heavy velvet curtains blocked any light from the windows. Even
after she had switched on the lights, shadows clung to the corners, and years of neglect coated the floor and the furniture.

After crossing to the desk, Barrie pulled the squat antique phone toward her, lowered herself into the chair, and paused with her hand on the receiver. Whatever was lost in this room, the pull came from one of the desk drawers. It made her head pound. She tried the handles, her fingers leaving trails in the dust. The drawers were all unlocked except the one where the pull was strongest. She had the top drawer halfway open to search for a key, but then she stopped. This wasn’t her desk, and she had upset Pru enough already. What she needed to do was talk to her aunt about the Watson gift.

Not only was it strange to have anything lost at Watson’s Landing, but also there was something strange about
how
and
where
things were lost. Why was the locked drawer the only pull of loss in the library? Despite the neglect, there wasn’t so much as a tug from a pen or a missing paper clip anywhere else in the room.

But that was a question for another day.

She dialed Mark’s phone number, reminding herself she had to focus on the conversation, do better than she had the day before. He needed to believe she was happy, that her life had become one big social whirl.

Weirdly, in a way, it almost had been.

“I’ve barely stopped all day,” she told him when he asked
what she’d been up to. “I even went for a moonlit walk with the hottie last night after I talked to you. And I spent the whole day with him.”

“You go, B. What’s his name?”

“Eight,” Barrie said, beaming happiness into the phone line. “Charles Beaufort the Eighth, and I probably owe Lula an apology. Turns out there
are
worse things than being named after a crooked street.”

She expected Mark to laugh, or come back with one of his sharp-tongued observations. But he said nothing.

“Mark? What?”

“What do you mean ‘what’?” His voice sounded pinched, the way it had the night of her first awards ceremony, when he’d worn Spanx to squeeze into a pink Chanel suit he’d accidentally bought too small on eBay. As pinched as Barrie’s head felt, standing there beside the locked drawer with its pounding pull. She dragged the long phone cord with her, and edged around the desk to cross the room.

Still Mark hadn’t spoken. “All right. What’s wrong?” Barrie tried again. “Don’t try to tell me it’s nothing.”

“Now, why do you have to go and keep asking me things like that?” He heaved a sigh that ended in a cough. “I’m here and you’re there, and ashes of that damned, stupid, infuriating woman who named you are floating around the ocean somewhere, and I actually miss her skinny white ass. Which I never
would have believed in a million years.” Mark sniffed wetly. “Now no more morbid talk.”

Barrie dropped herself onto the dusty chair and gripped the phone more tightly. “I’m not the one who was talking morbid.
I’m
not the one who sent me away.”

“I need to know you have someone who loves you before I go. Is that too much to ask? Pru’s good, isn’t she? She’s going to love you? Of course she is. She probably does already.”

“I think so,” Barrie said, unconvinced.

“Good. So tell me about this moonlit walk with your lucky number.”

“Well, there was moonlight and there was walking.” Barrie drew her knees to her chest to try to hold herself together. But there were more and more pieces of her heart splintering off all the time. “Then this morning he brought me a rose and took me to see sea turtles, and fed me the most amazing hot dog for lunch. A can’t-do-better-so-never-eat-hot-dogs-anywhere-else hot dog, so it’s a good thing I hate baseball, or I’d starve at the games. Have you ever heard of sweet potato mustard?”

“Sounds too good to be true,” Mark said. “The boy, I mean, not the mustard.”

Barrie thought of the way Eight pushed and acted like he knew everything, and she almost laughed. “Trust me, he isn’t too good. He
is
picking me up in an hour, though, so I have to
hang up. Oh, and I lost my phone. Call Pru’s number if you need me.” Mark was quiet so long, she thought she’d lost the connection. “Mark?”

“I’m still here. Quick, what shoes are you wearing?”

“Jeffersons.” As always, Barrie named the first shoes that came to mind, which was how the game was played.

“Jeffersons? Huh. High and sporty. Kick-ass cute without making you seem like you’re trying hard. You be very careful now, sweetness. You’re not used to this, and the number’s still just a boy. You’ve got places to go. No falling for him.”

No worries.

Barrie didn’t need that kind of aggravation.

“I met Lula’s best friend today,” she said. “Also my cousin Cassie, Wade’s niece. Turns out my father had a brother. Turns out Lula running off with a Colesworth was quite the
Romeo and Juliet
reenactment.”

Mark gave a snort. “Trust me, baby girl, that man was no Romeo.”

“I thought you barely knew him?”

“Just because he didn’t talk to me doesn’t mean I didn’t know what was going on in the next apartment. I know he was out all hours without Lula. That she had tear streaks down her face half the time when I ran into her at the mailbox or in the elevator. And I don’t mean from her migraines.”

“You never told me that.”

“Lula had radar tuned to the sound of his name. No point talking about him at all. It’s not like it was my business to judge before the fire. Or after. The minute I got to know your mother better, I realized she was about the most obstinate woman who ever lived.”

Barrie nodded, then realized Mark couldn’t see her. “I guess,” she said.

“No guessing anything, baby girl. I did my best juggling you and Lula, and how much to tell either of you. As far as she was concerned, your father didn’t exist. Easier to keep it that way.”

Barrie wondered if she should tell Mark about Cassie. He’d be happy for her, wouldn’t he? Still, something held her back.

“I better get going,” she said. “The number is going to be here before I know it.”

They said their good-byes and hung up. When she had put the phone back on the desk, Barrie couldn’t help wanting to reach for the locked drawer again. Lost in thought, she startled at a movement in the doorway.

“Sorry.” Pru stepped into the room. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Mary said she sent you in here because you still haven’t found your phone. How is your godfather? How are you doing with his . . .”

“Dying?” Barrie put up her hand and turned away when Pru came to hold her. “I’m fine,” she said.

“Oh, sugar.” Pru paused short of the hug she’d obviously intended to offer. “I imagine you believe that. That’s probably been your only option so far. Lula can’t have been easy to live with. Sometimes, though, we let ourselves get so used to being ‘fine’ that we lose track of how ‘not fine’ we are.”

She frowned at the portrait above the fireplace as she spoke, and Barrie suddenly saw the resemblance between the stern man and her aunt. It was there around the eyes, in the long, narrow nose. Remembering what Julia had said about Emmett, Barrie studied the portrait more closely. Her grandfather looked like the sort of man whose skin would have been cold to the touch even when he was still alive.

Was that why the library was so filthy? Because Pru didn’t want to face her father even after he was dead?

“It’s a coping mechanism,” Pru said. “Telling yourself you’re all right even when you’re not. Maybe your brain and emotions go numb so you stop wanting what you can’t have. But other people’s darkness can drag you down.”

Pru kept staring at the portrait. Then her chin came up. She crossed to the curtains and threw them open in an avalanche of dust. Moving around the room, she let the light in at every window, and then brushed off her hands and turned back to Barrie.

“I know what it’s like to have to be ‘fine’ even when you’re not. So don’t you worry about that with me, that’s all I’m
saying. You go ahead and be mad about Mark and Lula. Be sad. Be whatever you want. It’s okay to allow yourself to feel.”

“I don’t know what I—” Barrie began, but then stopped herself. “Did you ever read
The Bell Jar
? There’s a line in it about watching Paris, the city, shrinking with every second, making you feel smaller and lonelier. That’s how I feel. Mark used to be my Paris, and he’s slipping farther and farther away.”

Backlit by the sun, Pru, too, looked smaller. Deflated. Barrie painted on a smile. A little one was all she could manage. If Pru could smile, though, so could she.

“You said Mary told you my phone was still missing,” she said. “Did you find it?”

“No, honey.” Pru moved toward the desk.

Did Pru feel the pull from the drawer? Barrie trailed after her to see if Pru would reach for the handle, but Pru came to an abrupt stop and turned back toward her.

“Are you still planning on going out tonight?”

“Yes,” Barrie said.

“Then you’d better get yourself into the shower and get cleaned up. The Resurrection isn’t fancy, but Cassie will be all decked out—she won’t risk letting you outshine her. You make sure you put on something pretty. Hurry now. It’s getting late.”

Eight was in the parlor, tapping his thumb on the armrest of a striped silk sofa, when Barrie came downstairs. Dressed in a blue jacket and khaki pants, with his hair combed back instead of slouching in his face as usual, he looked older. Miles out of Barrie’s league. The thought and the lit-up smile he gave her made it hard to breathe. Him all dressed up waiting for her, her all dressed up coming downstairs—it looked like a date. Her first date. But it wasn’t. Eight was playing chauffeur and babysitter, that was all.